Kodak DCS 720x SLR Review

By
Movable Type Admin

The Kodak Professional DCS 720x camera stores its raw images in a proprietary, lossless
compressed format that averages about 2.5MB depending on the image content.
These raw .DCR files contain an embedded JPEG thumbnail image that is displayed on the
camera's LCD when reviewing images. Once these raw files have been transferred to the
host computer they must be processed with the Photo Desk software.
The DCS 720x can also process the image data in-camera and generate finished JPEGs.

Because this image data is raw, you can select and apply many enhancements
or modifications to the images before saving them in a more portable format.

Photo Desk can open a directory folder of images as a
"contact sheet" with each image shown as a large thumbnail. Above the thumbnail
are icons that represent the color balance, white balance, image "look" (product,
portrait, etc) and exposure compensation at the time of capture.

These are the available Image Tools - You click and select
a thumbnail image and then apply these options as desired on the
image. You then double-click the thumbnail to display a full screen version of the
image with the corrections applied. You can change any option desired and it will be
re-processed and displayed on the enlarged image.

As mentioned above, the raw image data can be manipulated post-capture with the
Photo Desk software. Never again worry about an entire shoot being ruined
because the white balance was incorrectly set. You can vary
the exposure compensation +/- 2.0EV, select RGB or grayscale mode, rotate portrait
mode shots, pick the desired white balance or use the one-click eyedropper, apply
noise reduction (low, medium or moire) and the amount of sharpening necessary to
overcome the softness caused by the IR or AA filter.

The embedded exposure information can be displayed whenever you want to reference
the original settings used to capture an image.

The histogram can be used to see the overall distribution of luminance, you can
toggle the Red, Green and Blue channels on and off as desired.

When you have modified your image to your satisfaction it can be saved back to the
lossless compressed and proprietary Kodak DCR format or you can use the "Save As" option
and save the image as a TIFF or JPEG format image. Shown above are
the TIFF save options, the JPEG options are below.

The following text is courtesy of Rob Galbraith, be sure to read his entire
Kodak DCS 760 review, it's from the pro photojournalist's point of view.

DCS Photo Desk, released last December, is the first in a suite of free and
extra-cost standalone Mac/Windows applications designed to replace and
ultimately surpass the functionality of the Import plug-in/TWAIN driver.
Kodak promises that by year's end, their strategy for the DCS 760 will be
more fully realized; for the next several months, however, DCS Photo Desk
will be the only Kodak application to convert RAW .DCR files from the DCS
760 into finished JPEGs or TIFFs.

DCS Photo Desk

Available now, the application in its current form is a
serviceable first crack at a standalone RAW file browser. It's strengths are
in two areas: the speed with which it processes out to JPEG or TIFF the
DCS 760's hefty .DCR files, and the simple but effective control it offers
over the colour and brightness adjustments made during that processing.
In fact, DCS Photo Desk's software exposure compensation function works
even better with the DCS 760 than with other Kodak digital SLR's, thanks
to some tweaks to the extreme compensation settings. In testing, I was
able to fully recover ISO 80 daylight images overexposed 2 stops. The
same extreme test with a DCS 520 or 620x at their lowest ISO, for
example, results in a strong colour shift in highlights.

In short, Kodak software remains the best I've used at converting RAW
data to finished files in an efficient and quality-focused manner. It also
includes keyboard shortcuts for numerous functions, and uses a clever
scheme of icons across the top of image thumbnails to indicate the
processing parameters (white balance, noise reduction, etc.) that have
been stored within that file.

But it lacks keyboard shortcuts for image zooming (out of necessity, I
added my own using OneClick for Mac), offers no colour management
support, file renaming of .DCR files isn't possible without copying them
elsewhere and, most egregiously, it offers only minimal integration with
Photoshop. And finally, screen real estate would be better managed if the
Info palette could be shrunk in a manner similar to the Tools palette.

So, in it's current form it does enable work to get done, and even the beta
version used to prep DCS 760 photos for this article has been stable. But it
has some distance to go before it surpasses the ease of use of even the
v5.9.3 driver, let alone 3rd party applications like Photo Mechanic 2 Pro.

Kodak plans to begin bridging that distance over the course of this year
through "feature creep," the steady addition of new capabilities to DCS
Photo Desk. Improvements are said to include better integration with
Photoshop, enabling photos to be opened directly into Adobe's pro image
editor without having to save them out of DCS Photo Desk first, the
inclusion of a profile picker interface that will enable the selection of
different film emulation types, or Looks in Kodak-speak, as well as the
ability to perform pedestrian tasks like file renaming on a window of
thumbnails. Updates to the program are expected to be free downloads
from Kodak's web site. DCS Photo Desk 1.0 is available on the Web as I
write this; v1.1 will be available for download soon, but the primary change
will be the addition of DCS 760 support, not new features.

DCS Camera Manager

A new application designed to capture or copy images from the DCS 7xx (and other
FireWire-capable DCS cameras) and set various camera properties. DCS Camera Manager
brings much-needed automatic image transfer from camera to computer, and it does so at
just over 5MB/second to my antique Mac G3/400, courtesy of the DCS 7xx's new FireWire
controller hardware. It integrates nicely with DCS Photo Desk, which can be set up to
automatically monitor a folder for arriving photos and immediately display their
thumbnails.

DCS Camera Manager should prove to be a solid, reliable utility for moving photos out of
the camera quickly, even while the photographer continues to shoot.

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